


Birthday

by prizewinningfruitcake



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Mentions Slavery, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 05:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16528124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prizewinningfruitcake/pseuds/prizewinningfruitcake
Summary: Fenris doesn't know when his birthday is, and Hawke intends to fix that.





	Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt from LaingLeigh: "Hawke throws Fenris a surprise birthday party? Or a day where he just celebrates Fen's existence?"
> 
> Then I wrote this pile of pre-relationship pining mush. 
> 
> ((They said bonus points for spanking, but I got a little UHHHH emotional and it wasn't gonna fit. There'll probably be something with spanking in the future though.))

It started as a joke, or at least Fenris thought it was. It was Isabela’s birthday and Hawke bought enough liquor to service a militia. They woke the following morning spread over the corners of her bed, razed by sunlight blazing through that tiny window, and Fenris said, “Please never have another of those.”

Isabela stacked a pillow on her head and groaned. Hawke swam through the bedding, smiling sloppy, hair a-muss, somehow never as poisoned as the rest of them, and said, “You’re next.”

He couldn’t be, Fenris protested - he didn’t have a birthday. “You _have_ one,” Hawke cracked the door of the tavern slowly, squinting. “We just don’t know when it is.”

“I fail to see the distinction.” Fenris said. He’d told him finally, that he couldn’t remember. Still, it was strange hearing him reference it, especially that way. We.

“Not for nothing but there’s a pretty big difference between not being born and not knowing the day, Fenris.” 

He couldn’t argue. It was hot outside, heavy, and his head hurt. Hawke said, “So you get to pick, don’t you? The next time you’re having a good time, you say, ‘it’s my birthday,’ and we’ll have a party. Get you drunk, have cake - it’ll be fun.”

Of course Hawke would look at his affliction and see opportunity. Hawke came back from the Deep Roads and declared that he “got Carver a job.” Fenris had feared his pity before he knew better. 

“No surprises,” he warned when he left Hawke in front of his house. He’d done a lot of sneaking around for Isabela’s party, swearing them to secrecy - Fenris did not relish the thought of being ambushed, even with cake.

But it’s useless to ask Hawke for no surprises, or impossible more like. Happenstance follows him like a persistent gust of wind, shifting and stirring and pushing him around. In truth, Fenris never minded unpredictability. That wasn’t it.

Hawke turned up a day later with Isabela and Merrill, a venture to the coast. They were meant to be gathering herbs, but they spent quite a while just sitting watching the waves. Bela spotted a smuggler’s cache on the shore among the rocks and came up with a shocking amount of gold. 

“This a birthday gift?” Hawke asked as he tossed a bag to Fenris. 

Fenris only shook his head. It was a joke.

It was a joke that Hawke committed to. At the market he bought three bottles of wine, “Since your birthday’s coming up.”

Merrill said, “When’s your birthday, Fenris?”

“I don’t have one,” he spat, an end to the subject before it caught on with the others.

Merrill huffed and waved him off. “Alright, go stand ankle-deep in your own gloom,” she said.

Though he briefly felt he could breathe fire, he did not raise his voice. Neither did he look away. “Is that what I’m doing?” he hissed before turning and walking in the other direction. 

Hawke called after him. He was good. He was well-meaning and wrong. Fenris couldn’t bring himself to regret the outburst, kept walking until he was home in his room.

After midnight, he heard boots tromping up the stairs, Hawke catching up. Fenris opened the door for him before he knocked.

“Sore subject, huh,” he said as Fenris moved to let him enter. 

Weren’t they all. Fenris sighed and seated himself again. “You don’t understand.” He said it so often it must have been tiresome. It tired him as well.

Hawke sat on the edge of his bed, his usual spot, and ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to make things worse.”

“It isn’t a joke,” Fenris said. “I didn’t choose this. If that’s how you think of me-” he broke off, unsure of where that sentence ended. 

“Think of you - how?” Hawke leaned forward, a wisp of a smile. “Gloomy? Not really. Merrill might, but she doesn’t know you as well.” 

_You don’t know me._ The words died in the back of his throat, unfair. What was there to know that Hawke didn’t? He’d told him a great deal, save for some details no one needed to know, things that stayed leashed and muzzled in the back of his mind lest they drive him mad. Hawke knew him as well as anyone. But how can you know someone without a past? What is a person who can’t recall their childhood, who doesn’t even know how long they’ve been alive? 

“I’m not certain _I_ know myself,” he said.

“Maker,” Hawke shook his head, “this really is a sore subject. Maybe I didn’t think this through. I just-”

“You were being kind,” Fenris said. “But it’s wasted on me.”

“I just _thought_ ,” Hawke continued past the interruption, a nod of his head for emphasis, “that despite the circumstances, it could be nice to choose a day for yourself. Without any...any bad memories surrounding it, I guess.”

He didn’t expect to hear that, not from Hawke. “What day is yours?” he asked, cautious. It occurred to him that he’d known Hawke for nearly a year and heard no mention of it. 

“Oh, a few weeks ago. 25th of Solace.”

Crossing out the days in his head, Fenris placed it. “You would have been…”

“In the Deep Roads, yeah. I didn’t even know it went by until we got back to the surface.”

“I’m sorry,” Fenris ventured, not knowing the proper response.

Hawke shrugged. “Not the worst one I’ve ever had.”

They were silent a moment, and Hawke said, “I left that wine downstairs.”

Fenris knew what to say to that. “Would you like to share?”

They built a fire and sat cross-legged on the floor, passing the bottle between them, and Hawke told him stories of birthdays from years past. There were good ones, proper ones, with dancing and merriment like the one he’d given Isabela; some were marred by conflict, by ugliness between family; some were lonely, spent away from home. One which culminated in Hawke’s sister, about ten years old at the time, gathering all his small clothes and throwing them down a well caused Fenris to spit wine onto the floor. 

Something tugged at him as Hawke pushed himself up to leave. A dull ache, something missing.

“My offer still stands,” Hawke said with a hand on the doorknob. “If you want one, I’ll try to make it a good one.”

It took him a couple months, but he chose a day. Hawke appeared under his window with a location for a ring of slavers they’d been tracking. Fenris called back, “Is it my birthday?”

“You tell me,” he said, grinning, and since it seemed fitting enough, Fenris said yes it was. 

There was nothing wild - no surprises. Hawke put a word out and there were four drinks lined up in his place at the Hanged Man when they got there. Even Aveline came for a little bit. They played cards, and at the end of the night when he was too unsteady to walk home, Bela let him curl up on the other side of her bed - Hawke flopped onto the end. 

Before they slept, Hawke gave him a book he couldn’t read - another one. “It’s poetry,” he explained. “It’s a better place to start than the other one. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d teach you.”

He wasn’t, and Fenris was inclined to take him up on it. By the next year, he’d have read that book a hundred times. It was the 1st of Harvestmere, a good solid day, he thought. 

That was the first one. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, but he had a means to start counting.


End file.
